Transferring settings to other instances of Visual Studio

If you have configured Visual Studio with some non-default Visual COBOL settings, you can use the available import and export Visual Studio mechanisms to export these settings as a file and import them info other instances of Visual COBOL for Visual Studio installed on other machines.

You can avail of the automatic settings synchronization feature inside Visual Studio. Make sure you're logged in with your MSDN account to all instances of Visual Studio you are working with in order for any changes to the IDE settings on one machine to be automatically applied to instances of Visual Studio on other machines.

Exporting the Visual COBOL settings

To export the Visual COBOL-specific IDE configuration settings to a file:

  1. In Visual Studio, click Tools > Import and Export Settings.
  2. Click Export selected environment settings and then click Next.
  3. Enable the check boxes for the settings you want to export and click Next.

    The Visual COBOL settings are available under the Micro Focus Tools node and in Options > Text Editor.

  4. Specify a name and location for the settings file and click Finish.

    This creates a settings file with a .vssettings extension in the specified location.

Importing Visual COBOL settings

To import any Visual COBOL-specific IDE configuration settings available as a Visual Studio .vssettings file:

  1. In Visual Studio, click Tools > Import and Export Settings.
  2. Click Import selected environment settings and then click Next.
  3. Specify whether you want to save the current settings to a file and click Next.
  4. Click Browse to navigate to and select the .vssettings file that contains the settings you want to import, then click Open.
  5. Ensure the settings you want to import are selected and then click Finish.

Settings synchronization

Visual COBOL supports synchronization of some of the COBOL settings in the IDE. If you're logged in to Visual COBOL for Visual Studio on multiple machines using your MSDN account, changes to some of the IDE-related settings on one machine will automatically be applied to the Visual Studio instances on the other machines. The following settings will be synchronized:

  • All of the settings under the Tools > Options > Text Editor > Micro Focus COBOL pages.
  • The settings on the Tools > Options > Micro Focus Tools > Directives > COBOL page.

For information about how settings synchronization works, refer to the Visual Studio help.

Restriction: Importing, exporting and synchronization is currently not supported for the following settings in Tools > Options > Text Editor > Micro Focus COBOL > Advanced:
  • Enable DB2 background syntax checking
  • Enable OpenSQL background syntax checking
Parent topic: Specifying IDE, Project, Folder and File Properties